I told him to get into the bed and I’d join him later, hoping he would fall asleep. But after he entered the bedroom, and after I’d killed fifteen minutes by slowly making myself a cup of tea, I decided I actually did want to join him. It was not just a test—it was a way of saying good-bye. I entered the small dark bedroom; Eric shifted under the covers and I could hear his steady breathing. I took off all my clothes and slid in behind him. He stirred but didn’t wake. He was naked, too, and the feel of his long warm body against mine didn’t make me cringe the way I thought it would. I ran a hand along his hard chest, down his flat stomach, and touched his penis. He instantly became hard, mumbling something into the pillow that I didn’t understand, then slowly turned toward me. I spread my legs and moved him between them. He began to say something but I pulled his head down so that it was beside mine. His hair smelled unwashed but good. I guided him into me, then pulled the sheet and blanket over our heads, and we made love in that smothering dark cave, neither of us talking, moving together in a slow, sleepy rhythm.
He fell asleep again after we finished, and I slid away from him, pushing the sheets down around my waist. The cool air felt good against my naked torso, my skin damp with sweat. I thought about what I planned to do to Eric later that night, and tried to feel bad about it. I compared him with Chet, who wanted to have sex with a child, but at least Chet didn’t pretend to love anyone. Eric was bad through and through, someone who would go through life taking only what he wanted and hurting the ones who loved him. I had handed him my love—my life really—and he had treated each with disdain.
Eric woke, disoriented and starving, a little after noon. He showered and dressed and we went out to explore my neighborhood. I took him to a takeaway spot and we bought sandwiches and drinks and brought them to a small park called Rembrandt Gardens that abutted a canal. It had stopped raining, but the skies were still low and dark, and water dripped from the trees and puddled everywhere. I spread my jacket along a wooden bench and we sat and ate the sandwiches, finishing them just as a sparse rain began to patter at the leaves above us. “Sorry for the weather,” I said.
“It’s pub weather,” he said.
“Ready to get a drink? The Bottle’s not too far from here. No attempting their beer challenge, though. That’s all I ask.”
“What’s that?”
It was all I had to do. When we arrived at the Bottle and Glass, a pub that was plain and boxy by London standards, with uncarpeted floors and wooden benches, Eric read about the beer challenge, and studied the names of those who had succeeded. To be immortalized on the Bottle’s walls all you had to do was drink one pint each of the pub’s ten draft beers, in the order in which they were lined up behind the bar, in the space of five hours. They monitored your toilet visits to make sure you didn’t throw up. Eric told me it didn’t sound particularly hard. I had thought the same thing, and brought it up to Stuart, the bartender, the previous week. He said the combination of beers, from porters to bitters to pilsners and ciders, was a rough ride and was much harder than it looked. He’d seen many a beefy guy give up, or throw up, before the end.
“I’m doing it,” Eric said, to both me and that day’s bartender, an older woman I hadn’t seen before.
“Seriously? Eric?” I said as the bartender said, “Right, luv,” and produced a sign-in sheet. “Print your name here where it says ‘start,’ along with the time, and I’ll initial it. When you’ve finished your tenth pint, all you’ve got to do is walk back up to this bar, sign your name at the end, then the rest is up to you. Most of them lose their last few pints in the toilet.”
I complained a little more, just for show, but I knew Eric wouldn’t change his mind. The first beer was a Fuller’s ESB, and I joined him. We took our pints to a corner table. “I’m on vacation,” he said, then took a long swallow.
“I don’t want you to be sick the whole time you’re here.”
“I won’t be. Ten pints in five hours. Not a problem.”
I stayed for about three and a half hours. It was clear that Eric was determined to finish the challenge, but he was on his seventh pint, a porter, and drinking it fairly slowly. “I’m more full than anything,” he said, but his words, from jet lag and from beer, were thick-sounding in his mouth.
“Let’s call it quits,” I said. “I’m sick of sitting in this pub.”
“I’m not going to come this far, and then quit.” He looked around. Some of the locals who had showed up around quitting time had taken notice of Eric’s attempt to make it onto the wall. I knew that Eric would keep going no matter what.
“Then I’m leaving. I’m starving, and I don’t want to keep eating crisps. I’ll get take-out Indian food and have it at the flat.”
“I’m sorry, Lily.”
“Don’t be sorry. Have fun. Try not to puke at the bar, and I’ll see you in a couple of hours. You know how to get back?”
“Just down the street, right?”
I left. It was dusk, the bloated sky a dark purple, and there was a fine mist in the air. I walked straight to the corner Indian restaurant that I’d been to many times. I ordered a rogan josh and a chicken korma, plus a Coke to drink while I waited for the food. “No nuts in the rogan josh?” I asked as the owner rung up my order. I knew the answer but I wanted to be on record as asking.
“No nuts in the rogan josh but, yes, cashews in the chicken korma.”